1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a tape printing apparatus for printing strings of characters, such as letters, symbols, and figures, which are inputted to the apparatus, on a tape, so as to obtain printed labels or the like, and more particularly to a tape printing apparatus of this kind which is capable of setting a character size (which can include a pitch between lines) line by line.
2. Prior Art
Recently, a small-sized tape printing apparatus has come on the market, which is called "label printer" or "label word processor" and used for printing on a tape. Differently from word processors and typewriters, the tape printing apparatus of this kind prints on a tape which is continuous and narrow in width by means of a print head arranged at a fixed location therein by feeding the tape in one direction. The tape printing apparatus is capable of printing one or more than one line of strings of characters entered and arranged in a line or lines. The size of characters (hereinafter referred to as "the character size") can be specified line by line as desired. Further, to save the trouble of specifying the character size line by line in the case of the number of lines to be printed being fairly large, it is also possible to collectively specify the character size for all the lines, as shown in FIGS. 17A to 17C.
For example, in the case of FIG. 17A, when "Uniform character size mode" is selected for designation, an identical character size is automatically set to each of all of a plurality of lines (three lines in the case of the illustrated example) according to the tape width and the number of lines. In the case of FIG. 17B, when "Leave-it-to-apparatus mode" is selected, the character size is automatically set for each line depending on the number of characters assigned to the line such that a line having a larger number of characters is set to a smaller character size (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 7-125376) so as to make the character strings balanced in length. Further, in the case of FIG. 17C, "Character size menu mode" is selected from a display window of the apparatus, and at an immediately lower level, an option of "LMS" is selected, for example, to designate "Large", "Medium" and "Small" character sizes for the three lines, respectively, whereby the three lines are automatically set to respective character sizes according to the designated character sizes (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 6-143690).
According to the conventional tape printing apparatus, however, it is troublesome to directly specify a character size line by line especially when the number of lines is large as mentioned above, and further the "Leave-it-to-apparatus mode" and the "Character size menu mode" as solutions to this inconvenience do not necessarily provide a layout of characters as intended by the user.
In general, character sizes conceived by the user for respective lines are not absolutely defined ones but relative ones contemplated by taking the layout of whole character strings and the tape width into account. The user would like to designate the character sizes, for example, such that a first line should be of large characters but a second line should be of small characters. The most suitable of the above-mentioned three modes for such a manner of designation of character sizes is "Character size menu mode". However, this mode suffers from the inconvenience that a selection should be made from a limited number of options, which makes it impossible to set the character sizes in a flexible manner. To increase the freedom of layout of printed characters, increased number of options can be provided. However, this degrades operability of the apparatus, and the user will find the apparatus difficult to use on the contrary.